author
Andrew Oliver
1706–1774
Best remembered as the Massachusetts official caught in the fury over the Stamp Act, he was a wealthy Boston merchant whose public career put him at the center of the tensions that helped lead to the American Revolution.
1 Audiobook
Copy of Letters Sent to Great-Britain by His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson, the Hon. Andrew Oliver, and Several Other Persons
by Thomas Hutchinson, Andrew Oliver
About the author
Born in Boston in 1706 into a prominent merchant family, he graduated from Harvard in 1724 and went into business on Boston’s Long Wharf with his brother Peter. Over time, he moved deeply into public life in colonial Massachusetts, serving in several important offices and building close ties with Governor Thomas Hutchinson’s circle.
His name became famous in 1765, when he was appointed to handle the Stamp Act in Massachusetts. The appointment made him a lightning rod for colonial anger: protesters hanged him in effigy, attacked his property, and turned him into one of the best-known symbols of unpopular British policy in Boston.
He later served as lieutenant governor of Massachusetts and remained a loyal supporter of imperial authority as political conflict sharpened. Andrew Oliver died in Boston in 1774, remembered less as a writer than as a vivid figure in the dramatic years just before the Revolution.